


Can of Soup

by LadyLazarus



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Anal Sex, Angst, Asexuality Spectrum, Cheating, Happy Ending, I'm Sorry, M/M, Oral Sex, Questioning, Slurs, at all points stiles consents but i'm putting a dubcon warning, because it's not really what he wants and Stiles is confused, derek isn't responsible for dubcon, graysexuality, sterek
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-07
Updated: 2014-02-17
Packaged: 2018-01-11 11:58:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1172800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyLazarus/pseuds/LadyLazarus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles doesn't know what's wrong with him when he tries to have sex.<br/>Then he meets Derek and everything is fine until one day the feeling comes back. (Please read tags for warnings!)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Mike

**Author's Note:**

  * For [leewrites](https://archiveofourown.org/users/leewrites/gifts).



> Hey, so warning, no derek in this chapter. if you choose to, wait until the second chapter! That's ok! but this is VERY important set up for the rest of the fic and i chose to have it be with an OC because they're gone after this chap etc. I'll post the second part soon once I've written it. If you're worried about updates, note that Lee will kill me if I don't update and we've HELLA outlined this fic like months ago together SOOOO. It'll be pretty angsty, but happy ending (i'm a sucker).

Sex is hard. He doesn’t even mean that as an innuendo. Whoever told you it was going to be easy or a piece of cake was a bold faced liar and they should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Porn is great to watch, at one point educational even. Masturbation is fun, good for the health too. Handjobs, pretty ok! It feels nice to have it be someone else's hand wrapped around your dick.

But sex? Honest to god blow jobs and fingering and fucking and rimming and _sex_? No, it’s not easy and it’s not fun. But Stiles tries, because it’s supposed to be, right?

He’s at the club – The Jungle right now. He’s three shots in already, having pregamed this part of the night. He maybe needs three more drinks before he’s wasted on the dancefloor, sloppy and loose and full of life. He’ll need music and a beat and a hot boy and there’s sure to be one somewhere. Someone will have thick enough beer goggles that they won’t notice his too-pasty white skin and his awkward limbs. It’ll be fun.

Except when he walks in, it feels like a trap. It feels like one of those hazing pranks you hear about in the paper where people are accosted and then one dies and then suddenly it’s not so much fun anymore. So Stiles heads to the bar to at least deaden some of the pain, some of the feelings of being lost in a place where everyone seems to fit into a cozy niche made just for them.

“Just a cosmo. Thanks.” Don’t judge, cosmos are delicious. He surveys the crowd, eyeing a few prospective hook ups all over the bar. There seems to be a few options. Hopefully. His drink arrives and he downs it quickly, ordering another. And another after that. Social lubrication, liquid courage, whatever. It helps when you’re trying to hook up with someone. Anyone really that will take pity on your sexless existence.

Stiles walks onto the dancefloor, at ease from the alcohol and feeling unwound and tingly. The sensation of the thrumming bodies around him and the insistent beat under his skin light shim up and he’s dancing, moving to the strobe lights. His limbs are flying in a discordant, laughable way and his body gyrates, possibly the only attractive thing he’s doing at the moment. And maybe because he’s such a novelty, such great entertainment, someone approaches him. He’s a tall blond order from a foreign catalogue and he’s just the right price for Stiles, so they're up in each other’s faces, sweat sparkling with the lights, refracting green and blue lasers across their skin.

The guy leans back from their shared space and takes off his soaked shirt and his smooth body shines with its slight dampness and the inevitable and ubiquitous glitter of the club. He’s dazzling in every way and honestly Stiles is turned on. The guy has cropped prep school hair, a good boy (doctor? Lawyer? Someone to bring home to the family?) but Stiles doesn’t even really care about that. He cares about their hips meeting and their tongues crashing together, because the kissing is great. It’s hungry and fierce like sharks hunting each other and he bites like one too, clamping down on Stiles’ neck and it hurts so _good_.

So when the guys beckons Stiles toward the exit, Stiles obliges, happy and pleasurable. Outside, the guy tugs his shirt back on, shivering against its cold damp in the night air and he introduces himself.

“Mike.”

“Stiles.”

“Interesting name. Car’s this way unless you wanna grab yours and follow.”

“I caught a cab here.”

The walk across the lot is short and their faces are half serious business and half smiling because they’re getting _laid_ and it’s fun and it feels good and they’re excited. Mike’s car is nice. The leather seats feel nice, even if they’re cold at first. The drive is short too, which is good because Mike has some trouble keeping his hands to himself and strokes his hands up Stiles’ thigh. Which, maybe it was sort of an invitation to do that since they’re obviously not heading over to Mike’s for some cuddling. They’re going to fuck, and if some of the foreplay starts in Mike’s car, well, ok then. But it does feel kinda of weird and maybe Stiles chalks that up to being the Sheriff’s kid and needing two hands on the steering wheel.

When they park, it’s behind an apartment building. They head up the big wooden landings to the third floor and they go inside from the back door. All the lights are off and it’s hard to navigate the strange apartment, but Mike takes his hand and it’s not so bad after that, getting to the bedroom. Mike leans down a bit and captures Stiles’ lips with his own, pulling him toward the bed and sitting down on it, dragging Stiles down with him.

It’s awesome, to be honest. Mike is a great kisser and it feels so good. Stiles feels wanted and sexy and just overall pretty _good_. Mike takes his shirt off and unwraps Stiles form his many layers before attacking his chest, nipping at his skin and sucking his nipples into his mouth until they’re hard too. This feels good too, but it also feels like it’s not his own skin that Mike is admiring and worshipping so skillfully with his tongue.

What he feels like his own skin is tingly and sharp, as if it has bumps raised all over it that someone is dragging a dry toothbrush across. So Stiles thinks it’s his turn, take some of the heat off his own sexual performance and put it on Mike. The only sounds in the bedroom are the noises escaping their lips or the ones being made with lips, tongue and skin. Mike grunts when Stiles pulls back and pushes Mike down into the mattress, running his hands down his body, admiring the sight before diving in. He has his own way of teasing a man with his tongue, extracting the most pleasure form the slowest possible maneuvers on his body. Some would call it painful, but Stiles calls it fun. If there’s one thing about Stiles Stilinski, it’s that he’s got a talented mouth.

And he puts that to work.

He backs up off the bed and starts to undo Mike’s pants and his underwear. Thankfully the other man helps by lifting his hips, and at his insistence, helping divest Stiles himself. Both naked, Stiles climbs back on him, straddling his waist and going up for another searing kiss.

Hard dicks rub against each other. Stiles grinds into Mike as they make out driving him wild as much as he can, bringing his stamina down with ministrations to his thick cock. Mike certainly wasn’t lacking in any department, that’s for sure. Stiles wants that cock in his mouth, like, yesterday, so he awkwardly scoots himself backward and leans down, taking the head of Mike’s cock into his wet mouth, enclosing it in a tight warmth. Mike is beside himself, mewling almost with the pleasure of Stiles’ tongue swiping across the head of his cock. He’s bucking up into Stiles mouth, begging for more, begging to fuck him deeper down his throat. He wants to cum inside Stiles, make him swallow every drop of his thick come and taste it on his lips when they kiss, but Stiles has other ideas.

Instead he wraps a slightly cold hand around Mike’s cock and works it with only half the fervor he would if her were trying to get Mike off. He tugs, sucking down on his length and swallowing his own spit when there seems to be too much in his mouth with Mike’s dick in there too. He rolls Mike’s balls around between his fingers, feeling them tighten up every now and again with the spikes of pleasure coursing from Mike’s cock.

Stiles pulls off with a teasing smirk and stats kissing Mike again. He can do this. He likes this even. Mike is fun to play around with and blowjobs are fun. It feels good to give someone so much pleasure and why let talented mouths go to waste anyway? Sucking cock is good.

Mike reaches for his bedside table, rummaging around for a condom and some lube. Grabbing both, he shoves the drawer shut and leaves over Stiles, sliding his hand loosely around Stiles’ cock and rubbing up and down, not quite jacking him off, but definitely not ignoring either. He’s focused on the lube and Stiles, pliant beneath him.

Then he’s rubbing at Stiles’ ass and that’s where it always starts – the feelings of inadequacy, the fear of performing badly, the discomfort of being fucked, the way he feels when he comes or when the other guy comes, the dirty feelings and that bristly feeling all over his skin like it’s not his own, like he _needs_ to crawl out of his own flesh.

So he lets it happen. He tells himself he’ll like it. It’ll feel good (and sometimes it does if the guy is careful. Mike’s careful). He’ll be a good bottom and he’ll be quiet, but make noises when he should and try not to squirm too much. If he plays his part well, shouldn't it feel good?

Stiles stares up at the ceiling and thinks about other things until he can feel Mike pressing into him and he tries his best to relax his tensed body and Mike kind of grunts as he goes in. It seems to be going ok and Mike is thankfully a courteous fuck, but he’s starting to pick up the pace, snapping his hips into Stiles who offers the obligatory moans. It kind of hurts when he goes that deep, but Stiles can handle it. He’s handled worse. He feels like crying actually, but that would be such a boner killer and he doesn't need to push his problems on this guy. He’s been nice so far.

But then Mike changes his angle and he’s rubbing against Stiles’ prostate with slow rolls of his hip and it feels good, but the more it feels good physically, the more revolted and uncomfortable Stiles becomes in every other way. Just before he comes, he feels like he’s at the ultimate apex of disgust. Not with Mike, but with himself. He hates feeling this way and feeling gross and unclean. He hates the way his eyes go dead and he knows it. He hates staring up at the ceiling wishing it would come crashing down on him. He hates the way he wants someone to skin him and thrown the rest of him in a tub of water. It’s horrible and full of hate and it _burns_.

But sex is supposed to feel good and he comes.

He lets Mike rut against him for all of a minute before he’s pushing back and making fake excuses about hurting and being sore and all kinds of things. Mike’s face is pinched up because he probably wanted to get Stiles off and then really fuck him and he wasn't even halfway to being done. He’s probably pissed as hell but Stiles starts to jack him off as consolation. Mike swats his hand away and finishes up quickly as Stiles rub his hands up and down Mike’s thighs and fondles his balls – the least he can do.

In the silence that follows Mike’s groaned orgasm, they put themselves together. They dress and Stiles runs a hand through his hair. Tissues are thrown away in the bathroom but no one takes a shower.

“Need a ride or…?” Mike’s face says it all. He’s nice enough to offer and follow through, but God knows he doesn't want to drive Stiles anywhere. He’s obviously not pleased about the outcome of the night.

“Nah, um I got it. Cabs hang out up the block around that strip club.”

“Cool. I’ll uh, let you out.” Mike scrubs a hand over his face and leads Stiles out. On the way, moonlight, or probably a street light, shines through the slats on Mike’s windows and illuminates the open shelves of his kitchen. Stiles sees a can of soup: Cream of Celery.

Who the fuck eats cream of celery? Gross.

But then Stiles realizes. He’s the cream of celery. Possibly good in theory, but then when you’ve done all the work of putting it together and heating it up, it’s disgusting. He certainly feels like cream of celery.

So he skitters down the wooden steps to the back alley and catches a cab up the block back to his apartment. He takes a shower and goes to sleep. For now, the anxiety and partial sex and self-hate will keep him at bay. For now that’s all he’ll be, but in a few days or a few weeks, who knows?

It happens again. And again. Different guys, different reactions to Stiles’ stopping sex.

He starts to get a reputation and he doesn’t blame them. He’s trash in bed no matter how much he tries.

God maybe he’s just a selfish prick after all, even if he doesn’t want to be. Over and over he goes to the club and he picks up guys and the same thing happens. His body is not his home. He feels sick. He wants to puke. He hurts and he cries. Sometimes he even prays and when God doesn't answer he screams.

It’s always like this, until the night he meets Derek.


	2. Derek

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Derek is in this chap!!! :D YEAH STEREK SEXY TIMES. i updated way sooner than I thought I was going to and honestly I'm so pumped about this narrative that I'll probably update way quicker than I think I will again, but I just can't get tit out of my head since I started!

So many guys have names that can grunt: Mike, Greg, John, Kyle, Jack. You can moan them out or you can scream if they want you to. It’s so easy to play the part. Stiles plays the part exceptionally well. He’s probably waited as long as Leo DiCaprio for his Oscar. If you saw him on this street, you wouldn’t know whether he was acting or not. And maybe he doesn’t want you to be able to tell.

The problem is that after Hunter and Jeffery and Tom and Enrique and Shawn and Jones and the other John, Stiles gets tired and he wonders why he even bothers. The problem is that he can last a long time lying in bed, lying to himself and to his heart and he may even be better than that than pretending to be _fine_. So when he suffers through a couple wet dreams in which some faceless, nameless nobody helps him to an orgasm in the back alleys of his nightmares, he figures he should go out. He should at least satisfy the primal urge, the need, of his physiology. The problem is that amongst all the lies he tell himself, he still wants someone. He wants someone caring and attractive and smart and wholesome and kind and loving. There’s a need, not to procreate, but to align himself with a comforting soul that will hold him at night, that he can rest easy with and the pain of knowing there must be that person somewhere out there is too great to handle.

Instead, Stiles lies awake on his neatly made mattress, one that has held few bodies apart from himself and he cries, because the air feels cold around him and he doesn’t know what he’s doing with his life. He doesn’t know what he’s _fucking doing with his life_ and it pierces him straight through. There are few ways to kill the spirit someone, but one of them is to make it clear that they could die and no one would know the slightest difference. That’s where Stiles is – at the lowest of his pits of despair, a place black and shadowed and lonely and he feels the dirt around his neck, the black void of the world seep into his skin and he feels like nothingness.

So he goes out.

Over and over and over he goes out to see strange men. He passes by them with alluring come-hither glances in the bars. He makes protracted eye contact in the grocery store and he becomes daring as he passes the churches. Who knows what risks Stiles Stilinski will take? _As long as someone fixes him_.

He ends up at the same place night after night, soaking his pillowcase in drool, night-sweat and tears and no one is the wiser. Somehow he fills the expanse of his queen size bed with his long limbs and pretends that the tight sheets are his lover’s arms and the folds of the comforter he swings his leg over are is the body of his beloved. Make believe only lasts as long as his eyes are shut and they are never shut for very long.

So he goes out.

He goes out and he picks up men. He spends so much money on shitty draft beer and he buys memberships to random sex clubs. He goes to cruising spots and the dark corners of the gay underworld – the outdated and dingy places that homophobes use as examples in propaganda. The main bars hate him and he knows it. He knows his reputation is complete shit, that charitable bouncers will warn potential hook ups as he leaves about his patterns and they’ll make up excuses to leave.

It’s not like he’s unaware that he has completely failed as a gay man and as a sexual human being. He just doesn’t want people to point it out at every turn. Isn’t it enough that le lies awake on his bed staring at the ceiling thinking about getting fucked? He’s on his back, getting fucked _so hard_ and he loves it. He’s moaning and he comes and he loves it still, loves the slick, hot cock inside of him ramming their come deep inside of him. He’s supposed to love it. He writhes with ecstasy and the world is at ease. Except that’s not him. It’s some fake shell and he’s not moaning, he’s screaming and no one is listening. They shush him, hold his lips together and they claw at his raw, sensitive skin with razor blades. His body is not his own, but he doesn’t know who it belongs to. All sensation hurts.

So he goes out.

And tonight he finds himself at The Jungle. For the past few weeks, he’s struck out here hard core. No one has wanted to talk to him or look at him as if he’s become poison, and honestly, he has. He is a dangerous commodity. There is only one Stiles Stilinski, but touch him and you may be burned, you may be overtaken by venom.

He’s at the bar now and smiling at Henry, who never fucked him and is kind enough not to let Stiles’ reputation ruin his good service. He hands Stiles his double whiskey (since when did he go from cosmos to straight liquor?) and attends other customers. Stiles has his back to the bar, surveying the crowd with deadened eyes. He sees bodies gyrating against each other in spirographical curves, roulettes around each other. Stiles could graph the true hypotrochoids they make. They are nothing but mathematical visions of rhythm and dance and he is the theorist describing them in numbers in graphs.

But he wants to be one of them, to dance in such a way that his circular orbit intersects with another. They dance and he is spun in an endless repeating gesture that plays on itself in numerical perfection. He wants to be part of that electronic symbiosis, but instead he is a plague, an errant datum that spins the formula out of whack and he destroys the story of body on anonymous body.

“What are you thinking about?” He must be new, braving Stiles’ company in a place that knew his reputation so well.

“Vector-valued periodic functions and why the fuck I wasn’t a math major when geometry is so cool.” The guy isn’t even fazed. Either he’s used to non-sequitur and frankly un-appealing and very unsexy conversational topics or he’s just so utterly dense he has no idea what to do when he’s facing Stiles.

“I don’t know what that is, but I know obscure trivial facts about European history.” His smile was brilliant and solid. His teeth were a little long in front like a rabbit, but in a really adorable way. And just like every night before, Stiles had that moment where he thought it could be ok, thought it would be fun and perfect and the guy he picked up would have the magic touch.

The guys seems pretty casual, comfortable with just drinking with Stiles talking about random things, exchanging trivia and downing their alcohol. He has an easy smile, an easy posture set in his bones that reeks of a comfortable life apart from the dangers that Stiles poses in the bedroom.

He constantly feels like the villain, one move from tearing apart the bedroom and destroying those within, including himself.

So when this guy – Derek he must have said at one point – tosses a particularly carefree smile his way and glances at the dance floor, sidled up close to Stiles’ side and warm against his arm, he feels himself pulled into the vortex of every other night before. He feels himself opening up with a smile that takes less effort than it normally does. He feels happier than most nights. Maybe it’s the alcohol or maybe it’s the high of genuine conversation.

At the same time, a leaden heaviness settles in his stomach and he looks up at Derek’s smile. He owes it to him to back away, cut it off, protect him from the poison he is. It should be his responsibility, and yet he finds himself nothing but anting to touch him, to see how soft his beard is, to ask him if he’ll fuck him soft then fuck him _hard_. It’s the name of the game.

So they’re on the dance floor after a foggy moment of bravado. Stiles has thrown himself against the chemical beat of some Swedish pop music and his back his fitted against Derek’s front. Their bodies are a metamorphosis of bodily rhythm. One falls back, the other fills the space, the other surges forward and the other flexes away. The two of them are in motion and shattering the air around them. The humidity rises around them like a choking steam and, doused in sweat, they retreat back to the bar.

The glass is cold in his hand and Stiles stares into it as if the ice will tell him something about this Derek person he found, but then the next moment, the glass is slack in his hand, in danger of being dropped and Derek is all over his mouth, hungry and desperate. Stiles is desperate too, taking back as much as is being taken from him. They fight in a way that isn’t some sort of masculine display of dominance, but more like one alone and searching and in the fervor of finding some sort of solace. What they don’t tell you is that it hurts to find someone to fill the emptiness as much as it does to be empty in the first place.

So they take a cab and they’re back at Derek’s place. His loft his clean, quiet, industrial. They curve of the staircase like one of the hypocycloids in Stiles’ mind, bouncing against the edges or the wrought iron, tasting and biting and consuming each other in ways they were unprepared for.

The bedroom is dark. Stiles would never admit it, but the darkness helps. It keeps the darkness inside on the outside and drowns it in its own essence. It keeps itself away. Derek in his dark maroon Henley leads him to the edge of the bed and he takes off his shirt and jeans. He kicks of his shoes and pulls of his socks, hopping around like a teenager and presses into Stiles’ body with his own naked one, hiking up his shirt with his warm rough hands.

Stiles pulls of his shirts tentatively. He slips off his pants and sits still, waiting for Derek to make the first move, feeling his skin tingle form the scruffiness of Derek’s beard. He feels himself tense up. He knows what comes next. He knows how to anticipate the wave of nausea and the roiling stomach that follows. He’ll lie there passively and let himself be overcome. Then he’ll go home, shower and scrub his skin raw in the shower for an hour, burning himself with the hottest water that will come through the pipes.

Easy-peasy.

Except the nausea doesn’t come, because Derek has him lying on his side, softly kissing him and stroking his warm hands softly over his arms and neck, soothing him and pulling him in close to comfort him. He’s so different, so unpredictable here in the dark. He’s _nice_ and it almost feels even worse that Stiles knows what will happen inevitably when they attempt to fuck.

Derek straddles him and Stiles breathes out. He knows this. He knows the feeling of being spread out naked on his back and staring up at the ceiling, except he finds himself looking at the sharp strands of Derek’s hair instead of the fuzzy and ever-looming roof of numbness. He’s picking out the dark hairs on Derek’s head amidst the darkness of the bedroom.

They’re kissing again and this time Stiles closes his eyes. He can feel Derek pressing against him insistently and instead of hurting, he feels… elevated, high like he hasn’t felt in ages. It feels like this, right? This is what it’s supposed to feel like? He’s found the right person, right?

He’s got more energy now, Stiles surges forward, catching Derek off guard and throwing him over on his back. He’s spread across his torso, lavishing his chest with nips and licks and the wet heat of his mouth and Derek is groaning in the pain of ecstasy. His rough, warm hands are all over Stiles’ neck and shoulders, pushing him down and pulling him up, helping him cover Derek, leaving not a single untouched, unworshipped. Derek wiggles himself out from under Stiles, heads to the bathroom and comes back with a condom and a bottle of lube.

Stiles is strangely anticipating it. At first he tenses, readying himself for the revulsion, but when it doesn’t come, he relaxes, smiling. Derek meets him at the edge of the bed and hikes his feet in the air onto the crook up Derek’s arms while he opens the lube and heats it up between his fingers before leaning down to prepare Stiles.

He circles the muscle, pressing in and opening him up slowly, whispering unheard words into the skin of his calves and inner thighs. Stiles doesn’t know what he’s saying but it puts him at ease, knowing Derek is at least trying to make him feel calm. Then suddenly, one finger slips inside him and… and it’s not so bad. His insides don’t detonate inside him like they were full of a volatile chemical. He doesn’t feel like an army is marching from his stomach up through his throat. He feels good. He feels like this is the way it’s supposed to be.

He pushes back and Derek’s sinful mouth somehow doing something amazing with his thigh, slips in another finger and after a few long moments, a third. Then he pauses and adds lube and works the three fingers in him longer, twisting and hooking up to massage his prostate. It feels like he should be saying Hail Marys. He loves it.

Derek pulls back and Stiles almost moans like he misses the sexual contact. Everything is happening and it’s so much and he’s so confused, but he’s baffled in such a good way. Derek’s rolling on a condom, his flushed cock radiantly red in the dim darkness his eyes have adjusted to. God, he’s such a vision. Derek waddles up a little bit to position himself against Stiles and presses in steadily, holding himself firm and unyielding but gentle all the same.

The sensation is explosive. Stiles turns his head to the side to the sheets and groans form deep in his stomach and the vibrations cause Derek to hitch his breath, pausing in his entrance into Stiles. But he continues, amid the wracking throbs of Stiles’ body, the sweet comfort of his skin and the tightness of his ass.

When he’s settled in and Stiles has found a comfortable pattern of breathing, Derek starts to move, to pull himself out and thrust himself back in. The rhythm is slow like how they kissed at first until it builds up in an exponential frenzy, an endless multiplication of impression and bodily insanity. They are the fractal patterns of vibrant touches. Stiles keens, begging for more and Derek obliges, wraps his shite teeth around Stiles’ neck and clamps down hard, drawing the release from Stiles, feeling the come rocket between their skin.

He’s not far behind, feeling Stiles clench around him in the darkness. He finds light in the gleam of Stiles’ eyes, reflecting from the bathroom light left on filtering through the crack in the door. Derek tracks those eyes, the honey-whiskey brown capturing him like he feels his body has been captured in the height of sex. God, he could feel those eyes staring at him from miles away. He feels as penetrated as he is penetrating Stiles.

When he comes, burying himself deep inside of Stiles, he grunts, accidentally wiping his sweaty forehead across Stiles’ shoulder and he pulls out, tying the condom off before throwing it away in the bathroom and returning to the bed where Stiles’ eyes are glazed and hooded and smoky.

“That was,” Stiles hesitates, “That was really awesome.”

“Jesus, fuck, it was incredible. You’re so fucking hot, Stiles.” So Stiles must have told him his name too. Good, he guesses.

“I have to be up in the morning, so I guess I should go.” It’s a lie, but no one will ever question him on it. He lean forward to put his socks and boxers on, reaching for his Jeans when he feels a cool object against his elbow. He turns and Derek is pressing his phone against Stiles’ body.

“Can you give me your number? I’d like to take you out. Not like, I’d like to take you to my bed, just… dinner or something.”

“Dinner or something?”

“Sure, yeah.” He says with a smile. Stiles hasn’t taken the phone and he stares at it blankly for a moment before taking it in his long shaking fingers. For the first time, he feels like maybe something can work. Derek is a chance that he _has_ to be willing to take since nothing else has ever worked.

He puts his number in and hand it back to Derek.

“Text me so I have yours.” Derek smiles in the darkness and Stiles finishes putting his clothes on. He doesn’t hear his phone go off. He puts himself together and shifts uncomfortably before leaning down to kiss Derek.

The kiss isn’t fierce, and isn’t lazy either – just an in between that says there will be a continuation sometime in the future. It’s enough for what it is.

Stiles shows himself out and when he turns from the apartment complex onto the street, his phone chimes.

_You’re beautiful._

And for the first time in a long time, Stiles doesn’t save his number as a string of adjectives, but as a real name. A real person, _Derek_.


	3. It Hurts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> jesus fucking christ this one hurt to write.

Stiles is sitting at the bar in his kitchen with his phone in one hand and a cereal-laden spoon in the other. His lucky charms are starting to get soggy but he can’t seem to tear his eyes away from the little screen in his hand reading “ _Derek.”_

Yesterday had been something totally different. He wasn’t sure whether he wanted it to repeat right away or if he wanted to let it sink in before calling him back. What if it’s not as good as the first time and he’s lying there like every other time, wanting to melt into the sheets and cry? What if he’s expected to put out and he’s not in the mood?

So he just stares at the screen, making it light back up when it dims and eats his soggy cereal.

The next day Stiles is sitting at his job doing graphic design for a startup company. Currently he’s trying to figure out a way to make something about green energy initiatives not look like every other green company that’s out there. Namely, _no leaves or trees_. His tablet is out and he’s just doodling random things until he realizes he’s sketched Derek’s eyes. In the soft yellow-y light from his bathroom that night, he remembers the gray-green of Derek’s eyes glinting down at him, happy and alive. He felt a live too.

Third day after he had sex with Derek, Stiles finally gets up the courage to call him. The phone rings and rings and no one picks up. He thinks about leaving a voicemail, but what would he even say? He looks at the screen to hang up and Derek’s name is flashing there – incoming call.

“Hello?”

“Hi! Stiles?”

“Uh yeah.” Stiles is walking down the sidewalk on his way to the grocery store. It’s ten minutes away. If the conversation goes terribly then he only has to suffer ten minutes before he has an excuse to hang up.

“So I just wanted to say I had a really good time.” God he sounded almost pained to say that. He really did enjoy himself. He thinks? He’s not _that_ depressed, he thinks. He’s got friends and a job and other thing to distract himself from his terrible sex life. He’s more upset that he can’t really connect to people in the same as everyone else and that’s only making his anxiety worse.

“I had a really great time too.”

Pause. An obnoxiously long pause. Stiles picks up his pace, walking faster to the store so he can hang up faster.

“Um, I don’t really know why I called. Or, I think I had a reason, but no I don’t know…”

“Do you wanna get dinner tonight?” On a Wednesday? That’s not like, a hook-up day of the week, right? Well, maybe if you’ve already hooked up once, it doesn’t really matter because you’re fair game by that point. Stiles stops walking, scuffing a toe into the patch of weeds poking through the sidewalk. He’ll probably get grass stains on them now. He doesn’t really care.

“Sure. I’m on my way to the grocery store now so I’ve gotta do that and then get back to my apartment and put everything away so is it ok if it’s kind of late? It’s uh, 5:40 right now.”

“Yeah sure, of course!” His voice sounds cheerful and optimistic. Fuck, Stiles is going to be such a letdown. “How about 7:30 or 8?”

“Yeah that’s good.” Stiles looks up at the overcast sky. It’s gray as usual, but feels a little bit brighter. A few black birds fly over in a big ball, swelling up as they turn and then contracting tightly, zipping out of Stiles’ vision.

“Cool. How about the Thai place on Dempster?”

“Which one?”

“Oh yeah I forget there’s two! Um, the one next to the Starbucks.”

“Ok, I’m 20 minutes away from there. I’ll text you when I’m on my way?”

“Yeah! Sounds like a plan.” Stiles can hear the smile in his voice, not like an overexcited puppy smile, more like a gentle admiration. It feels good to hear that in someone’s voice.

It feels good to feel like someone thinks you’re attractive. It feels good to be wanted. It feels good to want someone else too. He thinks he wants Derek anyway. He’ll find out in a few hours. Stiles shivers as the cars passing him on the road blow past.

“Ok, see you then.”

“See you Stiles.”

So that night, Stiles is approaching the doors of a janky-looking Thai place even though he knows it’s good and he’s wondering if this is a good decision. The doors fling wide and a cold rush blows past him into the restaurant and he walks in, awkwardly trying to shove the door closed behind him.

Derek is seated at a table looking at a phone, fiddling with a napkin set on the table in front of him. He stands as Stiles approaches just like a classic gentleman, and for a moment, Stiles lets himself get swept up in the romance of his suave gestures. He lets the waiter pull out his chair and he sits as Derek sits with him, putting away his phone in the jacket that covers the back of his chair.

“I’m glad you came.”

“Well I said I was going too.” Stiles answers. Derek smiles to himself looking at the menu seriously.

“Well, who knows. I didn’t know if you were just saying that to be polite.” He blushes. His face becomes a deep red against his dark beard and his hooded eyes hide shadows Stiles would only recognize in the heat of the night from last Sunday.

The dinner is good. They talk and they’re happy. Stiles is surprised by how many times Derek makes him laugh. Derek is surprised by how many ties Stiles makes him forget he’s at dinner in public. They are a match everyone else would seem jealous of. Stiles is in the middle of telling an embarrassing story but Derek’s focused face makes it worth it. It tells him that someone is paying attention and they care.

And that seems to be their whole relationship. It seems to be what really binds them. Effortless dinner after effortless dinner. Derek and Stiles follow each other subconsciously around the city and they fall into easy habits of grocery shopping and museum-touring and for some ungodly reason, surveying new apartments. It’s an experience as largely foreign to stiles as anything else in the world and he breathes easy because for the first time in a very very long time, he isn’t being asked when he’ll be ready to have sex. He isn’t being asked if he wants to fuck or if he’s going to be a good boy or whatever.

Derek is _respecting_ him and that’s the weirdest thing out of the entire month that’s passed already. For once, Stiles feels human. He feels like he found his _one_ person. He’s found that perfect match that fits him in the important categories, and challenges him everywhere else. He’s the guy that whispers nonsense in his ear when he’s drunk and all he knows is that it’s something stupid like _You’re Beautiful_.

So they move in. After a month and a half of an easy relationship it seems appropriate. Derek is happy, almost ecstatic, completely overcome with the fact that Stiles says yes. This is what happiness feels like right? For his part, Stiles thinks he’s happy. He feels the high of life like Derek does deep in his chest and he gets excited for all the little things as well. It’s a wonderful exchange as they dance across the floor of random clubs, comparing different gin and tonics, trying to figure out who gives the most gin, but also the most lime. Who is most delicious when they’re too drunk to taste and all they have between each other is each other’s lips?

The world spins over and over in tight circulations for Stiles and the months leap by faster than he’s ever seen the go. At first he thinks he’s merely delusional, but then he realizes that being with Derek has lifted the sour fog that permeated his life for so long. For once, reading isn’t trying to erase his world and trying to forget about the things that hurt. Instead it’s the things that reflect his real world that enhance and make it worth living.

He loves Derek.

But at the same time, the darkness is seeping back. As if to counter the brightest emotions, the most vitriolic, dark come back with strength. They wrap his mind up in shadow. His body becomes a prison that he hadn’t felt for months. Instead of drinking wine, he drinks water if even to give himself the slightest control over his body. But it never helps.

And Derek’s eyes are the worst. They look at him like vibrant green planets, circling the incandescent sun. He sees them follow his own orbit and Stiles is lost among many bright stars leading him into oblivion. What is important is that the depression follows his closed-off flesh. They have sex once in a while and at one point he notices that he numbs himself against the bitter sense of Derek lying over him, pressing his hot skin against his own.

What they don’t tell you is that God ignores the quiet souls.

So Stiles moans when he’s supposed to, gazes on with deadened eyes, and examines the ceiling. He compares the popcorn drywall against the stucco style of his own and he wonders about the various advantages of them. Is one more aesthetically pleasing? The question goes unanswered like so many others. The point is, Stiles knows there’s an expiration date on this relationship and it poisons him to his core.

He feels like soup in his skin, like a plastic bag full of warm soup. He’s floating chunks amid some creamy gunk that was condensed at one point and he feels devoid of any importance. Derek can sense the distance growing between them. Poor soul even thinks it’s his fault and Stiles doesn’t have the voice enough to tell him the truth. As they drift apart in the night, like two solitary ships, Derek casts anchors toward him, begging, pleading and Stiles is too weak to do anything but brush him off. The darkness consumes him. It fills his fingertips and puts venom between his teeth.

In the inky black of the bedroom darkness, when Derek is over him, trying desperately to press into Stiles, to fill him up with a loving embrace, to wrap him in solid comfort as his sweat-slick skin slips across him in the night, Stiles lies still, unflinching despite the pain of his body.

The world warps itself in shades of gray and contorts his most colorful visions into demonstrations of illusion. There is no emotion. The world is weak and Stiles is weak and no one really wants him. How could they when all he creates is this? When all he creates is barren landscapes of agony? When all he can moan about in the recesses of the night is the tingling of tears running down his cheeks that even Derek isn’t able to comfort?

So when the coal-black feelings fill him up, he welcomes them. At least those are normal and known. He knows what they feel like, when the cruel voids fills up around him and presses in on him and the whispers that echo in his ear take on his father’s tongue and call him worthless, unworthy of love. He knows about this and he knows how to survive it. It’s something he can predict even if it hurts worse than being with Derek.

He lies. He leaves at night with no excuse. He doesn’t even dignify Derek with the trace of a cigarette on his breath. Who knows where he goes. The white sheets under him grow gray and angry and the dishes grow unused as the microwave gets used more. Even the curtains swaying in the daylight seem mad. Inside, Stiles screams.

How do they expect him to react when they expect so much from him? How do they expect him to break down in front of everyone? The world feeds on his pain already, why give it a feast?

So instead he panics. He feels the creeping up of the night over his back. He feels black devils over his shoulder whispering in his ear. He starts lying to Derek and going out at night into the city, downtown to sex clubs and back-alley dance bars. He goes where the sun is too scared to shine in the morning and he finds tall men with thick arms and thicker beards, waiting to put him deep into a mattress. He finds their hungry, empty mouths and he tries as hard as he can to fill them with the fullness he takes from Derek. He hopes they can bring him down from the heights Derek puts him at. His body burns like a funeral.

And the worst thing despite all of this is that it’s so obvious that Derek knows. He knows this is happening to Stiles. He knows there’s something wrong and he asks about it. He’s gentle and reassuring and kind. He does all the right things. He makes himself unassuming and gentle. He asks privately and subtlely. He allows for confusion and clarification and he recites himself over and over plain and clear. He is the vision of perfection.

God, he knows and he won’t say anything. He’s too timid to confront Stiles angrily, too worried to do anything but let him scamper off like an asshole in the dead of night. He knows it’s wrong. He knows he deserves better. He knows he should demand to know why, why _why?!_ But either Stiles will never tell him, or he’ll never want to know. The planet rotates around them. It twists and turns and it illuminates the darkness at all points sometime during the day, except Stiles.

So Stiles does what darkness does best and he spreads. He envelops the bars and the clubs. He starts fights at night and slips into cabs back to Derek’s place and at one point he punches him and forgets about it. That following morning he asks how he got a black eye and Derek tells him it was an accident at the club. His body shivers and he doesn’t know why.

So he sleeps with random men at night and he fights with others until daybreak either over beers or over sheets and he walks in at six am with come dried on his chest and foreign cologne behind his neck. He falls asleep just as Derek is waking up, unapologetic as his tired limbs are fucked out across their clean sheets and his body is loose from being fucked by more than one man that night. Men that aren’t Derek.

And Derek feels so lost. But they always said that tears won’t fix anything. Derek’s touches are full of guilt and pain and a kind of worship that says he loves Stiles even despite everything and it’s too much. It’s so much devotion and blind love that it pains him.

This isn’t what love is. This isn’t the happy fireworks and great sex and happy cuddles after the latest romantic comedy. This is heartbreak and poison. Derek’s kindness is poison and he feels himself become allergic to it. He starts puking as soon as he slips into bed, leaping up from their cool sheets to rush into the bathroom. He comes back and in the moment before he flicks off the light, he remembers the way that same light illuminated Derek’s eyes and he watches, looking at Derek’s open face, his questioning eyes, his full lips, his sad frown and Stiles runs back in, puking again, crying as quietly as he can, mixing tears with his bile and on the way back he makes sure to turn off the light before he looks toward the bed.

He knows their taste is on his tongue. He almost likes it. He almost enjoys how, unlike Derek, they just take what they want. They shove his head down on their hard cocks and come down his throat and he doesn’t have to concentrate on anything but swallowing their thick seed. He doesn’t have to enjoy it or hate it or anything. His utility exists simply in being able to suppress gagging on an 7-inch cock in a cold alleyway. He’s good at that.

But he feels Derek’s pain, tasting other men on his lips. And then, tasting other toothpaste and other mints and other flavors of gum. He knows, he knows, he knows.

It hurts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it gets better. i promise.


	4. Plates

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hahahahahha *jumps of cliff*
> 
> I updated warnings/tags because i was unsure. It's not really define-able? like everything is technically consensual, but i wouldn't say that it's good? idk. it's a hard judgment call and I'd rather be safe.

“I’ll be home from work late. Jackson needs me on this dumb project.”

“Ok. Pick up some wine after?” Stiles pauses with his hand on the handle of Derek’s loft.

“Yeah sure. What kind?”

“Whatever. Something red.” Stiles nods, not looking at Derek sitting at the breakfast bar. He knows he’s looking at him, eyes focused and unwavering. He knows Derek is looking for some clue.

Except Derek still thinks that Stiles cares. Stiles slides the door open and closes it behind himself. For some reason, Stiles had lost his sensibility. He’d rushed. He packed up and moved everything in with Derek, tossing away his other world behind him. And it had felt good. It had felt right. Here he was being domestic, going to the office and then to the liquor store and then probably home to a hot meal and a loving boyfriend.

He hated it. Thank God it would have cost more to end his lease than keep the place.

Some nights when he disappears, he goes back to his old bed and he falls asleep. He falls asleep where it doesn’t smell like Derek’s lotion and his shampoo and deodorant and cologne. It doesn’t smell like his leather jacket and his industrial modern loft. It doesn’t smell like hi impeccable taste in food and his bookshelves and fresh air up high in the Beacon Hills skyline.

It’s only Stiles’ and it’s comforting even if the loneliness cuts him apart.

So Stiles drives out to his office and heads to the bathroom. He’s five minutes early and he splashes water on his face like they do in the movies and the comic books and nothing happens. His face and shirt collar get wet and he feels miserable. He dries himself as best he can, the crappy brown paper towels disintegrating against his shirt, leaving pilled paper fibers behind. He locks himself in one of the stalls.

Someone comes in. Jackson by the looks of the shoes – his boss.

“I hope you’ve got some shit worth showing for this account Stilinski.” There’s the remarkably clear sound of Jackson’s belt jingling as he shakes the piss form his dick and his zipper follows. He barely washes his hands in the sink before storming out of the bathroom. Stiles exhales a breath he wasn’t quite sure he was really holding and rests his head against the cool plastic of the stall. He felt sick.

The meeting that followed went fairly well. The green start up company he’d been designing for did, in fact, want leaves in their logo. Stiles winced. At least Jackson didn’t look like Stiles was completely useless. With his luck, his next project would be with a new brewery that wanted another trendy, hipster logo with vintage templates. Same old, same old.

He sits at his desk and stares at the blank screen. Surprisingly his work hasn’t seemed lost, just everything else around him. It’s like he can operate normally for everything else except the things that he wants to matter. He looks at his phone. He knows by now there should be at least one text telling him how Derek’s thinking of him, Derek who seems like the perfect boyfriend, Derek whose tragic background has made him stronger, made him cold and then loving after therapy, Derek who is a successful webcomic artist, Derek who respected him and tossed his world into the clouds.

He swipes at his phone, pointedly not looking at the simple _I love you._ that comes up and he downloads Grindr and Scruff and makes profiles, scurrying to the bathroom to take pictures.

For the rest of the afternoon at the office he flirts with guys and ignores Derek’s texts. His computer monitor goes to sleep and the dark screen reflects a fuzzy depiction of Stiles in his chair, spinning around and leaning back as he talks to J, an emphatically _masculine_ guy with a buzzcut, hairy chest and muscles for days. He looks like one of those sick steroid fantasies from men’s fitness magazines. Maybe he’s ok looking, not really Stiles’ type, but he’s making Stiles feel like shit and that’s all that counts.

J asks him if he likes groups. If he likes poppers. If he likes to be a good boy.

_Yes. Yes. Yes._

So Stiles leaves work early, and finds himself in the middle of a group of five men with menacing smirk. They call him names like “cumrag” and “bitchboy” and “pussy” and they fuck him into next week. When he keeps begging to be fucked, they shove a wadded up jockstrap in his mouth.

_Yes. Yes. Yes._

When he climbs back into his jeep, he heads to the liquor store and buys a bottle of merlot. Right before he checks out, he buys a second bottle. In the parking lot, he drinks half the bottle and the rest of the warm water bottle he’d left in his cupholder.

When he gets home, hair a fucked-out mess and back sore from bending over strangers in the afternoon, Derek is there, kissing him, ushering him in, leading him to a table set with a white tablecloth.

Two candles stand, illuminating the table and the corona of light refracts in Stiles eyes like he’s seeing auras. The lights seem to bright and the wine he drank seems too little. His body shakes and his computer bag slips from his shoulder.

Derek looks happy. He thinks Stiles is overcome with the gesture. He pulls out a chair for Stiles and rushes into the kitchen to bring out the food. Stiles stares at the plates. He feels as flat and cold and empty as they do. He looks at the glassy reflection, distorted where the ceramic curves, and he thinks about the way he feels twisted inside, how he can feel how loose his ass stills feels, how the sour wine sits in his stomach.

He can still taste _them_.

A salad appears on his plate. When the tomato comes up to his lips automatically and he smiles as his teeth burst through the tight flesh of the small tomato, its pulp explodes in his mouth. He swallows its seed like he swallowed theirs.

And then he’s up, running to the bathroom, puking his guts out while the sliver of darkness leading into the bedroom is covered by Derek, hovering like he wants to help.

“Bad tomato.” Is his excuse. So Derek takes them all off, even the ones on his plate. They were all fresh.

He feels the heat of the candles on his face when they’re eating the rest of the dinner. Everything tastes wonderful objectively, but Stiles can’t help thinking it tastes bland. The wine is sour on his tongue and keeps thinking of other things in his mouth, in Derek’s mouth and he gets so angry at the calm smiles Derek tosses his way over broccoli and linguini.

When the meal is finished, Derek takes him to the couch and they sit together. Stiles is still too afraid to ask why Derek wanted to make such a special dinner. He’s too afraid of the millions of possible answers that could come from Derek’s mouth.

“Stiles.” Derek is holding his hand and it feels hot. It feels like standing too close to the oven or the dryer but you can’t get away, an uncomfortable heat that isn’t enough to make you sweat, but enough to make you uncomfortable, to make you writhe in your own clothes. “I love you.”

I love you? _I love you?_ No. _No._ There’s no way Derek can still love him. There’s no way Derek can still look at his face and see someone happy and truthful and kind. There’s nothing inside of him. He’s empty and broken. He doesn’t know what or who he wants. He doesn’t know where he’s going.

He pulls his hand out of Derek’s hand and he turns away. He trembles, forcing himself not to cry and he fails. He’s silent, the wracking sobs only evident in the rapid contractions of his chest as his breath shudders over the arm of the couch.

And Derek’s right there, cradling his face, concerned and non-judgmental. He’s holding him so tenderly, unlike anyone Stiles has ever been with. His tears are being wiped away gently by Derek’s sleeve, wrapped over his thumb.

“Stop it. Stop _touching_ me. Let go of me, Derek!!” He’s screaming, miniscule droplets of spit spark out of his mouth. His body shivers with something else. It’s indiscreet anger, ricocheting around his stomach, exploding in his bones, suffocating him. Derek’s eyes are wide, hurt, his hand in the air unsure where it should land.

“Stiles, what’s wrong?” Gentle. His voice isn’t mad. It isn’t even sad ( _Yet_ , he thinks), just full of worry.

“Everything!”

“Did I do something?” Internally, Stiles rolls his eyes. He’s not sure. His whole life is frustrating mystery of pain and dark bars followed by shadowed men.

“Everything! Nothing! I don’t know! I don’t know when you’re going to get it!”

“Stiles, just talk to me!” He’s on his feet, his eyes are burning and he rubs his fists into them, trying to ease the itchiness of the tears before they start running. He’s turned away from Derek, shoulders coiled.

“Why don’t you get it? What do I have to do? Huh? This? Will this do it?” He runs over to the table and slams Derek’s plate on the ground. The shattered pieces form constellations across the dark floor and sparkle in the candlelight.

“I can just get a new plate.” Derek’s voice cracks like the plate on the floor. He flinches at Stiles’ frustrated groan as he slams his fist into the table, shaking the silverware with indelicate clattering.

“I break things. I’m broken. You can’t fix me! Today I got fucked by FIVE men, Derek. How does that feel? Can you fix that? I’m a fucked up mess!”

“We can see someone though! I don’t care about it! I don’t care about them. You’re still Stiles. I still love you!”

“Why? What have I ever done? Do you know how many people I’ve fucked? And liked it?”

“You’re just doing that to hurt me Stiles!”

“But you just take it. What do I have to do to make you realize I’m a piece of shit? You’re _pathetic_.” Derek is either less than pathetic for chasing him or more of a saint than anyone else he’s ever met. Derek’s face pinches up and he frowns. His forehead smooths out in a calm fury. His fists are clenched and he grits out his next words.

“So what, you want me angry? You want me to be angry so you can feel like you’re being punished? What do you want? To get fucked hard, to fuck other guys? Go ahead! Go ahead and throw your fucking life away Stiles! You want me to be angry? The only way you’re gonna get that is by not letting me help you. We’re a goddamn _couple_ , Stiles! We work through things together. Does that even fucking matter to you?”

“Obviously not!” Derek laughs, turning away and throwing his hands wide in the air.

“Obviously you DO if you’re being such a fucking asshole about this! If you didn’t care you wouldn’t be FUCKING yelling at me!”

Stiles’ voice breaks in a heaving sob, his breath shuddering as the energy drains from his body. His cheeks soften and he pales, overcome with exhaustion.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” He whispers.

“That’s ok.” Derek’s voice is just as soft, all traces of anger seeping out of him as he warily approaches the frail form standing in front of him. He steps over the broken plate and holds Stiles in his arms.

Stiles crumples against Derek, his spine seems to disintegrate under his broad hands.

“I’m so sorry. I’m so fucked up. I can’t figure it out.”

“That’s ok. We’ll figure it out together.”

The apartment is quiet. Derek feels Stiles’ breathing return to normal and they clean up the mess in silence. Derek jokes about getting plastic plates for Stiles to throw when he has tantrums and a shocked laugh burst out of the bottleneck that has become his throat.

It feels better, even if it doesn’t feel good yet.

The next few days are sensitive. It’s like the whole apartment is covered in that broken plate and they’re struggling to walk over without cutting their feet or each other. Stiles comes home straight from work, deletes the apps form his phone, kisses Derek with the taste of his lunchtime run to McDonald’s instead of whatever guy he picked up.

Derek looks up counselors. He finds the best one and he makes an appointment for the next Tuesday after Stiles gets off from work.

The days have been easier, more carefree, even in the strained bits. Stiles feels more comfortable. He sleeps at night without waking up, without needing to be drunk, without needing to be fucking into a black oblivion.

Until Tuesday.

Tuesday he wakes with an insistent revulsion in his stomach. He looks around in the dark, at Derek’s silent sleeping body.

Softly, Stiles gathers up his clothes into his gym bag. He grabs his phone and computer and all the important things and he slides open the metal door of the apartment. He looks into the soft gray darkness and feels something in his stomach telling him Derek is awake.

He knows Derek’s looking up at the ceiling in the same empty way Stiles is so used to and he slides the door closed behind him.


	5. Can of Soup

The strangest thing is how easy it is to lie to himself. Every day he gets up and he goes to work. He comes home and he eats. Maybe he cries, but every time he does, he realizes it won’t change anything. How dead do you have to be for tears to give no relief? Derek keeps his space. He keeps himself away from Derek.

He still has the voicemails, the ones where Derek is just barely holding it together:

“Hi, Stiles? I don’t know what’s wrong, but I haven’t heard form you all day, so… Give me a call back, ok? Please.”

“Hey Stiles, I’m so sorry, can you just tell me what I did wrong? Is it something I said? Um, call me back. Please.”

“Stiles, I didn’t mean it, I swear! I mean, I did mean it. I do love you. But you don’t have to say it back! I can wait. Really! Just come home. Please.”

“Please Stiles. I’m going out of my _mind_. I-I don’t care what you do, just please come back. Please.”

 _Please Please Please Please_.

Stiles wanted to delete them for the longest time. At first they made him angry and then sad, and now sometimes it’s the only way to get him to stop crying, replaying them over and over again.

 _Stiles Stiles Stiles Stiles_.

All he has is an empty bed that feels too small at the same time it feels too large. He has a cupboard full of cereal and pasta and soup, but none that Derek likes. He has a bathroom with one sink and one toothbrush. He has a dresser and only one side is filled with clothes.

 _Call me back Call me back Come home Come back_.

He’s so good at lying to himself. He knows it’s almost a year to the date when he left Derek, a year of counseling and therapy and maybe getting his life back on track. He knows when the date arrives he won’t be able to do anything but lie in a puddle of his own puke and sour alcohol.

He knows it, but he pretends not to, and that’s the only thing that keeps him on two feet.

It’s been long. New words have found their way into his vocabulary: _asexuality, libido, depression, anxiety, graysexuality, spectrum, homoromantic_. New words which describe him somehow, that feel right. He knows what that itchy feeling is, why it stretches over his skin and makes him want to empty his stomach.

He knows why he tried so hard to fuck it away, to cure it with fire and poison. He knows why he threw away the one thing he never had to fear in the first place. He knows why he aches so much, so deep into the night, every night. He still lies to himself on occasion, jumps into the club, but comes out flayed alive.

He’s so exhausted from hurting.

So here he is, standing outside of the grocery store with a list in hand, buying food that isn’t ramen and doritos and red bull. He knows he moves too fast now, through every part of his life. He needs to constantly tell himself to walk slower, to glance around and notice things, the little things that fill up the world around him. He can focus on one thing, filter out other things, just so long as he realizes they’re there. He can walk without being so scared now.

The wine aisle is nearest to the door and he makes it past. Dr. Morrell says that it’s self-medicating and dangerous. He made a promise to stop. This week is important. Don’t hurt yourself.

So he walks past, repeating the list over and over in his head, clutching at it like a life line in one hand and the basket in his other hand like another.

Meat. He can do that.

He can’t do that.

Cheese. He can do that. He really can. Cheddar is simple enough. He can choose between thin or thick slices, pull down the overpriced flat packages and place them in his basket.

Milk. Half gallon of 2 percent.

Pasta. 2 boxes of spaghetti. 2 jars of sauce.

He’s halfway through his list and he’s goddamn proud of himself. He only has a few more things to get on his list, but then around the aisle he smells Derek’s cologne.

Derek never shops here. Unless he moved, there’s no reason for him be here. Unless he was coming home from the gym or work. Fuck, there’s plenty of reason for him to be here. Maybe it’s not Derek.

 _Please Please Please Please_.

No one is in the aisle when Stiles turns. He sighs and leans up against the racks of assorted spices and he breathes. Other people wear that cologne. It’s probably not Derek. His face feels hot, flushed and strained.

This is how his panic attacks start. He squashes the feeling down, buries it under his lunch and groans. Out of the corner of his eye, he catches a figure in a black jacket, unaware, staring at a selection of greek yogurt.

_Derek Derek Derek Derek._

Stiles runs, actually bolts from the aisle and over four or five to the soup aisle. Spice bottles knock to the ground, a shaker of thyme leaves explodes in his wake, a green constellation of agony. He crouches down over his basket and practices breathing – 7 in, 11 out, 7 in, 11 out.

His whole body is shaking when he finds himself standing up, unclenching his hand and shakily smoothing the grocery list. His lies only work when the lie isn’t deciding between blueberry or strawberry.

So Stiles reaches out with a rattling hand for the cream of celery soup, some dumb ingredient for a casserole and the can of condensed mush slips from his sweaty hands, rolls away and then curves to smack into the bottom of the shelves. The clang echoes in Stiles’ ear like no other sound before it because there Derek is, reaching down to pick up the can of soup.

And Stiles _knows_ about this. He knows how Derek’s body bends, how much it _can_ bend. He knows how it flexes away from him or toward him in ecstasy. He knows how that leather jacket smells, how it feels on cold nights, how it fits around him mostly, but he’s still too skinny to fill it out. He knows how soft that Henley is, how it has a small hole at the hem, but Derek doesn’t care because it’s his favorite. He knows how soft it is because he’s gone to sleep with it under him.

What he doesn’t know is that face. He doesn’t know how shredded and empty that face is until he looks at it and realizes it’s the face of those four voicemails.

 _Stiles Stiles Stiles Stiles_.

“Stiles?”

The can of soup is being offered like some kind of olive branch. Derek extends his arm almost like he’s pushing past some kind of wall and it’s eating him to the bone. Stiles eyes are wide, flitting around the aisle. He sets the basket down, looking at the ground, wondering how he didn’t notice he was crying, but now his shopping list is smudged. He backs away slightly, turns to leave.

“Don’t. Stiles, please. Don’t leave me.” Don’t leave me again. Don’t leave without a word. Don’t change your shipping address and your home phone. Don’t notify the banks and renew your old lease. Don’t sneak in and move out your clothes. Don’t leave me again.

 _Call me back Call me back Come home Come back_.

Stiles freezes, unable to leave, but unable to feel Derek’s eyes on him anywhere but his back.

“Please don’t leave me now.” He sounds closer. He sounds like he’s right beside Stiles. Stiles is clutching the side of the grocery shelves, begging for the metal to melt into a wave and swallow him.

He’s been so good at lying until Derek is touching his shoulder.

That’s all it takes for him to crumple, to cough out an animalistic sob, maybe too human for human ears and there he is, forehead pressed to Derek’s shoulder, hands that betrayed him wrapped around Derek’s waist, unsure if they should move.

He’s sobbing, muttering incoherent syllables as shoppers pass the aisle with bizarre or derisive looks and Derek’s hands smooth out the shaking of Stiles’ back.

“’m Sorry. I’m so sorry Derek.”

Derek hushes him, moves him through the aisles and out of the store, baskets abandoned, holding tighter to Stiles’ waist than he ever has before, pulling him into the backseat of the Camaro and holding him quietly in the darkening of the evening and the tinted windows.

Even when Stiles is done shivering and his tears are finally starting to dry on Derek’s shirt, they stay quiet.

“I’ve been going to therapy,” he almost whispers. Derek hums. He’s split between crying himself and smiling that Stiles is finally speaking to him. “I’m fucked up. I fucked up with you.”

“I’m not gonna say I’m over it.”

“I know.”

“I mean it though. I love you.” That’s it. Take it or leave it. You have me or you never see me again. I’ll move away. I’ll change my number and sell my place. I won’t find you in the soup aisle. I won’t cry too.

“I’m scared.”

“I know.”

“I’m trying to be happy.”

Derek leans his head back against the frame of the car. “Is it working?”

“I want it to. But you were the missing part.” Stiles shifts his shoulder so he can look up at Derek who’s fighting back his own tears. The emotions in this car could power the city for a year. Derek’s arm is slung over his eyes, his nose is red and his mouth is quivering.

“And?”

“I think I love you too.”

“You think? Or you know?”

Does he know? Is it a lie? Hard to tell when you’ve been playing at both of them for almost a year. 11 months and some weeks of screaming at yourself one thing and then another. He feels like he’s starting to fall apart, but in a good way, like the fragments he’s placed on the walls of his life are starting to crack and flake away.

“I love you.” Derek chokes out a laugh, his mouth twitching out a smile as his eyes start to leak from under his arm and he lies there, head back for a few seconds, hurting in the same good way that Stiles is falling apart and they finally feel better. “I wanna fix what we had.”

Derek pulls his arms away, meeting Stiles’ eyes. “No, I don’t want to go back to that. I want something new.”

_Something new._

_Come home Come back_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IT'S DONE. happy ending! Sterek cuddles! Working through pain and bad communication! Thank you so much for reading. I love you <3~

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on tumblr as [Foolproofpoem.](http://foolproofpoem.tumblr.com)


End file.
